That's wonderful. Thank you.
Good afternoon, members of the committee. Let me start by thanking you for inviting me to contribute to this review of the act.
As has been noted by several of you and your guests, a serious review of the Lobbying Act is long overdue. Hopefully this process will be very productive for all of you. There's a lot more attention being paid to issues of ethics and influence than I think many of us would like, and it has become impossible to look the other way lately.
I know there are some new members, so I will tell you a bit about me. I'm a former employee of the Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario, where, from 2010 to 2015, my role was to administer the Members' Integrity Act and to backfill in other mandates. As Commissioner Motherwell noted in her appearance, that office also handles lobbyist registration, disclosures of wrongdoing and public service ethics. Everything is under one roof, you might say.
Because of my professional experience, I'm often called upon now to comment in the media about public sector ethics and accountability. I should note that my perspectives are very much informed by my experience sitting in the room and doing the administrative work on the administrative side. I believe in fulsome transparency because I want to encourage public trust and good-faith civic engagement. I believe that if information is available to the public, they might just consume it in ways that help us to protect our democracy. I'm a bit of an optimist in that sense.
For my opening statement, I'll make a series of quick recommendations, most building on the recommendations of others who have appeared before you. First, though, I want to situate my remarks by saying that, to me, a lobbyist registry is not simply about weeding out the bad actors by forcing them to make their engagements visible. It is about giving us the tools we need to better understand how governments make decisions. This includes who influences those decisions and how.
To echo Commissioner Bélanger, I'll say that I think we focus too much on who gets paid to influence and how much time they spend trying to influence as being indicators for who should have to register. I encourage you, as legislators, to trust that the commissioner's office will use its expertise to find ways to lessen the administrative burden of registering and reporting, and to focus your efforts on putting rules in place that strive, first and foremost, for what is right and what serves the regime's ultimate goals.
I teach public sector ethics at York University, and I tell my students that a policy line has been drawn, separating lobbying from the idea of registerable lobbying. This is always a bit confusing for them. I tell them that just because you aren't required to register doesn't mean that you aren't, in fact, lobbying.
As you might imagine, I fully support the commissioner's recommendation number one to do away with the “significant part of duties” threshold. Keep it simple. Figure out any specific exceptions that you want. Worry less about inconveniencing people, and put rules in place that serve the purposes of the act.
I'd also like to note my support for making sure that the designated public office holder designation is doing the work we want it to do. The regime's goal is to capture communications that are being made in an effort to influence those who themselves hold power or who occupy positions of influence. Just because you are not appointed under subsection 128(1) of the Public Service Employment Act does not mean you are not in a position of influence or power. I would strongly encourage the committee to make clear recommendations about how wide this net should be cast.
Similarly, Commissioner Bélanger's 12th recommendation pushes back against the idea that registerable communications should only be those that were arranged in advance. I can't tell you how many times I've had a casual conversation with an MP or policy adviser at the airport or at a conference. I get to choose whether I approach them and press them on a policy issue or not. If I'm someone who works in the policy world and who has an employer, then I should know the lobbying rules. This committee shouldn't have any sympathy for me having to file a quick report after a communication if that's how I choose to engage during those kinds of impromptu encounters.
In terms of penalties and other compliance measures, my answer is that, yes, changes are needed. It's harmful for public trust in her office that Commissioner Bélanger has to be so secretive about her investigations and that she has to refer to a peace officer when she believes that a person has committed an offence. Have her office survey other jurisdictions and provide you with a comparative analysis of what is being done across the country and in other Commonwealth states. I would strongly encourage you to suggest amendments to the act to allow for a range of additional compliance measures, which I know you've heard from almost everyone.
Finally, I want to return to my experience in Ontario, where everything is under one roof. I realize that conflicts of interest, lobbying and whistle-blowing are all separate offices at the federal level, but it is impossible to deny that they can have a lot of overlap on some files. I know we like these offices to have operational independence, and I know it can be controversial to make big changes to them, but I would encourage this committee to speak with the Ontario office about its experience administering multiple mandates under the wide ethics and accountability umbrella. Is it beneficial? What are the challenges? Are there greater efficiencies to be gained?
If you're going to give consideration to Commissioner Bélanger's request that a new funding mechanism recognizing and reinforcing the independence of her office be established, then I would encourage you to also think about how a new funding mechanism could be used to help improve structural independence and operational effectiveness across accountability offices.
I saw that the idea of combining offices was briefly mentioned in last week's conflict of interest report. I imagine a larger study would be in tow, but that's probably something you can get away with recommending in your report.
Thank you again for this opportunity.
